I’ve just returned from an amazing trip to the ABACUS conference in Australia with a renewed energy around credit unions and, of course, my Next Top Credit Union Executive project! Since I survived all 42 hours of flying time over the past two weeks (yes, I said 42 combined airplane hours) and a climb up the Sydney Harbour Bridge, I’ll share with you my biggest take away.

Credit Unions across the globe face one similar core challenge: awareness.

I’m confident my VP of Unbanking initiative that I’ve updated you on via this blog will be a great and vital step in combating this awareness and membership eligibility misconception we face each day. It’s the challenge I feel most passionately about and therefore the one I chose to focus on here. It was also a great experience to talk to young credit union leaders literally on the other side of the world who are facing the same challenge. The cooperative nature of our industry speaks volumes when we’re able to come together and share our challenges and successes as I was able to do over the course of the couple weeks.

Erin King, our VP of Unbanking, has joined the Connex Marketing team and has already been out and about in our branches. Her first task was helping our members celebrate International Credit Union Day (something they didn’t even know existed.) Admittedly, Connex has never really gone out of our way to host any ICUD initiatives, but this seemed like a perfect opportunity to throw Erin right into the mix and hear what our members were saying about why they choose to Unbank with Connex.

For this, my last blog entry before our presentations at the CUES CEO and Executive Team Network next month, I’ll just leave you with the fact that I’m excited to present those videos and many more success factors for our very first VP of Unbanking! Looking forward to seeing everyone in Dallas!